Urban greenspaces benefit both human utility and biodiversity

Nataly G. Miguez, Brittany M. Mason, Jiangxiao Qiu, Haojie Cao, Corey T Callaghan 

Urban greenspaces are essential for both human well-being and biodiversity, with their importance continually growing in the face of increasing urbanization. The dual role of these spaces raises questions about how their planning and management can best serve the diverse needs of both people and biodiversity. Our goal was to quantify the synergies and tradeoffs between human utility and biodiversity benefits in urban greenspaces. Through a detailed inventory, we mapped 639 urban greenspaces throughout Broward County, Florida — one of the most populous counties in the United States. We identified and categorized various physical attributes (N=8 in total), including playgrounds, athletic facilities, and picnic areas and derived a ‘human utility index’. Concurrently, we assessed biodiversity by estimating species richness within an urban greenspace. We found little relationship between our human utility index and biodiversity. More specifically, when the index was broken down to its parts, we found a positive correlation between some attributes such as playgrounds, bodies of water, nature preserves, and dog parks with biodiversity, indicating potential synergies rather than tradeoffs. This alignment between our human utility index and biodiversity suggests that urban parks can effectively serve multiple values without necessarily sacrificing one for the other. Both the human utility index and biodiversity correlate with greenspace size, emphasizing the significance of larger greenspaces in accommodating diverse values. Our results offer insights for optimizing planning and management of urban greenspaces to simultaneously benefit local communities and ecosystems, highlighting the potential for harmonizing human and biodiversity needs to foster sustainable cities.